Pope Francis will travel to Canada Sunday, kicking off a week-long trip he has described as “a penitential pilgrimage” that will include a formal apology to Native Americans on behalf of the church and a meeting with Prime Minister Trudeau. 

Mr. Trudeau and others called for such an apology tour in June 2021, following the discovery of apparent mass graves for nearly 1,000 children on the grounds of two Catholic residential schools for Native Americans. 

“I have spoken personally directly with His Holiness Pope Francis to press upon him how important it is not just that he makes an apology but that he makes an apology to indigenous Canadians on Canadian soil,” Mr. Trudeau told the press at the time. Francis apologized to representatives of native groups at the Vatican in April of this year.

No exhumations have occurred at the schools, and some scholars doubt the findings of the ground-penetrating radar technique that uncovered the ground disturbances identified. Meanwhile, Mr. Trudeau, himself at least nominally Catholic, characterized a spate of arsons against Catholic churches in Canada as “understandable” in remarks putatively denouncing the crimes.

However laudable the Holy Father’s commitment to conciliation may be, two questions come to mind: First, is the pope responsible for the actions of every Catholic cleric? Second, do such gestures strengthen or weaken the church’s position in the world?

To the first question, Francis himself seems to answer in the negative. This pontificate has shown a strong preference for handing over policy decisions to local hierarchs, notably the handling of communion for pro-abortion politicians in America.

To the second question — whether efforts toward conciliation work in the church’s favor — the results speak for themselves. One of Francis’s signature diplomatic initiatives was a reconciliation between the church and the Chinese Communist Party, which until 2018 maintained a separate Catholic hierarchy under its own control. 

The agreement allowed the party veto power over the Vatican’s bishop appointments, which provoked strident criticism from the underground Catholic church in China and its advocates, including Hong Kong’s Joseph Cardinal Zen. 

Cardinal Zen has since been charged with instigating sedition against the government, and is out on bail. In short, Catholic relations with China are in a worse shambles than before the agreement. 

Similarly, it is not clear that Francis’s apology will do much to placate the church’s Canadian critics and opponents. One Native American group is already complaining about the circumstances of the papal visit, saying its members lack “the agency, money or even technology to attend the pope’s visit.”

Francis has cultivated a big-tent approach to the Church and an openness to institutions and persons hostile to it — sometimes to the detriment of its most loyal members. What does his commendable desire to meet people where they are have to show? A papacy that takes on the guilt for the long-past historical crimes of its far-flung members, while at the same time unable or unwilling to intervene on behalf of its own positions in China, America, and elsewhere.

Despite the repulse of rumors about his pending resignation, the Holy Father is 85 and remains in poor health. His Canadian sojourn follows the cancellation of an Africa trip due to an ailment of the knee. It is time for his potential successors to begin pondering how best to strengthen the billion-strong Catholic bloc. 

A number of the candidates are reportedly cast from the same mold as Francis. We wonder: Will the apology tour never end?